Matt's Journal

What a gloomy day it is today. It’s Saturday. It’s raining; has been, all day, and it’s snowing heavily in the mountains. This is good. The snowpack was very low when we tried to snowshoe at Donner Summit a few weeks ago. We need the snow and the rain, then, but how nice it would be if it were warm and sunny nonetheless.

Like Maui. There you woke to the sound of birds outside the open windows and doors, feeling not too hot not too cold but just right, every day, and although I am sure this would become routine and old at some point it hadn’t yet turned that way for me, and it was a daily joy just to be alive.

Yet, we have our days of sun and warmth, and the body in fighting the cold and heat knows that it lives and breathes in a way that it doesn’t in a place like Maui (although it was pretty cold at the top of Haleakala). It has been a lazy sort of Saturday, and we eventually pried ourselves outside to walk to the library to get movies (L) and read magazines (me) and then came back via the post office. Things appeared to be normal, excepting that the library was not too crowded, which is unusual for Saturday.

There is plenty of worry around what with COVID-19 and its attendant uncertainties, not to mention those surrounding the reactions to it. We laughingly noted the absence of toilet paper at little Taylor’s Market, and shortly after that the lady behind us in the checkout line, a little old lady, expressed disturbance when she asked whether they had toilet paper and was told no. Toilet paper! Why is everyone stocking up on toilet paper and bottled water, and not meat or canned food? I joked that we’ll see how it goes “in the end” which only evoked an eye-roll in Laura. We speculated if that doesn’t serve a health purpose because of another guy we know who throws such comments (and who looks good for his age). His wife looks good too…maybe the eye-rolling does you some good.

Enough. I smell food downstairs and it’s time to go down and make myself present and indicate that should there be some good things to eat that they will find an appreciative and ready audience.